Catherine Vallejo, PhD

In general, my research interests and publications center on nineteenth-century Spanish-American women’s issues and writing, especially as related to the Spanish Caribbean, and based on the perspectives of feminist criticism, sociocriticism and discourse analysis. Research on-site in various Caribbean areas has allowed me access to and (re)publication of little known, but interesting and important works by women writers from the Dominican Republic (Virginia Elena Ortea), Cuba (Mercedes Matamoros, Graziella Garbalosa), and Colombia (Soledad Acosta de Samper). After publishing a number of articles on (Cuban) Women in Spanish-American modernismo (in which women are still being ignored by contemporary critics), I have recently published a monograph arguing that there were women “in the men’s club”, as shown in the works of several Cuban poets between 1880 and 1915. My long association and collaboration with Casa de las Américas in Havana has also resulted in several collective publications of Latin-American women’s writing before 1900 (see Books published…). For the past few years I have been working on Spanish and Spanish-American women’s texts on their travels to the Paris (1889, 1900) and Chicago (1893) World Exhibitions (see Articles published). These and other projects have been funded by generous grants from Concordia University and the Canadian Federal government. My last major publication, titled Anacaona: La construccion de la cacica taina de Quisqueya, Santo Domingo, 2015, centers on the 500-year literary “construction” of Anacaona, an Indian woman executed by the Spanish governor on the Island of Hispaniola in 1503, about whom a large number of writers have produced fictionalized biographies in some form, generally with a specific ideological purpose.

Teaching activities

Several courses in the recently established MA program
All undergraduate courses related to Spanish-American culture and literature
Many tutorials (Honours and Specialization requirements), on varied topics